TARANTULA (1955)
There's always a risk when watching classic monster movies and B-pictures that they won't be as good as you remember when you first saw them as a kid; or that somehow their reputation has grown from other people's memories of it and watching it for the first time will only be a disappointment. Frequently you just discover how dull these movies actually are.
Not so with TARANTULA, which delivers everything its title promises. This one had managed to pass me by until recently - despite a childhood spent watching such films on TV, I was usually limited to the four terrestrial channels rather than the TV overload we have now - and I did go in expecting another film made up of 90% scientists talking and 10% badly dated spider effects.
The film throws us into the action straight away with the delightful sight of a mutated man dying in the desert, before the opening titles have even rolled. Yes!
I don't need to rehash the story since the title and the fact that it was made in the fifties tells you all you need to know. Scientific experiments, giant spider, etc. The mutated humans are a bonus and Bud Westmore's make-up is okay, but the real star is the tarantula itself. Even today the effects are surprisingly good - THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN is perhaps the only other film of the era which has effects that are still this good.
Of course there are still some dated elements, such as the prediction that by the year 2000 the world's population could be as much as 3 billion. If only. Still, there are times when the of-another-time feel generates a good laugh. Wonderful dialogue includes the line "Give women the vote and what do you get? Lady scientists!" Try keeping as straight a face as he does when he says it.
Of course the ending is the usual wholesale destruction although this time with the novelty of the armed forces actually doing something effective rather than failing miserably before the heroic scientist figures it all out. It does raise the question however of why explosives and missiles fail to take out the creature when napalm ends up doing just fine.
That's just me being too cynical though. This movie is splendid fun and one of the best of the fifties monster movies if you're planning to revisit the era of abnormally large wildlife.
Not so with TARANTULA, which delivers everything its title promises. This one had managed to pass me by until recently - despite a childhood spent watching such films on TV, I was usually limited to the four terrestrial channels rather than the TV overload we have now - and I did go in expecting another film made up of 90% scientists talking and 10% badly dated spider effects.
The film throws us into the action straight away with the delightful sight of a mutated man dying in the desert, before the opening titles have even rolled. Yes!
I don't need to rehash the story since the title and the fact that it was made in the fifties tells you all you need to know. Scientific experiments, giant spider, etc. The mutated humans are a bonus and Bud Westmore's make-up is okay, but the real star is the tarantula itself. Even today the effects are surprisingly good - THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN is perhaps the only other film of the era which has effects that are still this good.
Of course there are still some dated elements, such as the prediction that by the year 2000 the world's population could be as much as 3 billion. If only. Still, there are times when the of-another-time feel generates a good laugh. Wonderful dialogue includes the line "Give women the vote and what do you get? Lady scientists!" Try keeping as straight a face as he does when he says it.
Of course the ending is the usual wholesale destruction although this time with the novelty of the armed forces actually doing something effective rather than failing miserably before the heroic scientist figures it all out. It does raise the question however of why explosives and missiles fail to take out the creature when napalm ends up doing just fine.
That's just me being too cynical though. This movie is splendid fun and one of the best of the fifties monster movies if you're planning to revisit the era of abnormally large wildlife.
Labels: cult movies, science fiction films
posted by Alan at 11:00 pm
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